Stephanie (September 2005)

Rating: -1/2 of 5

Today We Live ranks down among my least favorite of all Joan films. (Trog, Goodbye My Fancy, This Modern Age, and Esther Costello share the dubious distinction.) Despite direction by Howard Hawks, story and dialogue by William Faulkner, and Gary Cooper for a co-star, the film's a boring and implausible mess (and was Joan's only box-office flop for MGM up until The Ice Follies of 1939).

After Joan completed Rain in '32, MGM had no project immediately lined up for her. Not wanting to waste the salary they were paying, the powers-that-be ordered director Hawks to insert a part for her in what was to have been an all-male WWI fighter-pilot melodrama called Turnabout.

In this new incarnation of the intended film, Joan plays "Diana Boyce-Smith" (aka "Ann"), a young, rich Englishwoman in World War I Britain whose father has just been killed in action. Gary Cooper is "Richard," an American who has come to buy her estate. In their first scene together, Richard walks around touching Ann's father's things; she is depressed and irritated and he leaves, contrite. In their very next scene together, however, Richard and Ann are suddenly declaring their love for each other. Huh??

There is absolutely no build-up to this newfound passion, which is just the first in a very long line of "Huh?" moments that include Ann's wardrobe in the opening scenes: The film takes place in the decidedly pre-flapper year of 1916, when women still wore their long hair in buns and their hemlines just inches above their ankles. Yet here's Joan, with a chin-length Garbo-esque do and a wildly deco Adrian creation, accompanied by high heels and a skirt barely covering her knees. (Soon afterward she appears in an equally unlikely suit with padded shoulders and various geometric pins affixed.) Also adding to the film's lack of credibility from the get-go is the failure of the leads to even attempt a British accent. (I take that back: Robert Young noticeably tries...once.) Walking around saying "Cheer-o" and "Stout fellow!" doesn't quite do the trick. There's also the oddity of Franchot Tone's character clenching his pipe in his mouth upside down on several occasions. An in-joke, or another case of no one paying aesthetic attention? There's definitely the sense that no one is minding the store here.

The plot is also extremely weak and poorly written. (I hope literary giant Faulkner was duly ashamed of himself.) Aside from Ann and Richard, the other two leads are Ann's brother Ronnie (Franchot Tone), a completely superfluous character, and Ann and Ronnie's childhood friend, Claude (Robert Young). (Side-note: This was Tone's second film for MGM. He and Joan met for the first time on this set and were married in 1935.) Before Ronnie and Claude ship off for war (or, in this case, London), Claude asks Ann to marry him. Out of fondness and sentimentality, she says yes... But she loves Richard! Will she choose American Richard or chum Claude?!

Since both love interests are portrayed as likable and honorable and there's no emotional build-up for either relationship, you don't really care who ends up with whom. The stakes are incredibly low or non-existent, but the tepid and uninspiring plot-line plods on and on: Ann agrees to marry Claude. Ann and Richard declare their love. Ann writes a goodbye note to Richard and takes off for London to meet up with Ronnie and Claude and to become an army nurse. Ann tells Ronnie she really loves Richard, then learns Richard has been killed in action. Ann and Claude marry. Richard shows up--not dead--and runs into Ann at hospital. Ann freaks out and runs away. Richard then meets a drunken Claude on the street and helps him home, where he discovers Ann. Richard and Claude (oh, and Ronnie) battle Germans together. Claude goes blind. Ann feels she must stay with Claude out of duty. Claude tells Ronnie he knows Ann loves Richard. Claude and Ronnie decide to do something honorable and foolish for the sake of "true love"...

Now, when I write the bare bones of the plot like that, you might think there'd obviously be more emotional weight in the actual scenes... Unfortunately, that's not the case. Most of the scenes are extremely short and rote. And the few attempts at rounding out the characters and making them seem more real are often pointless and annoying: Joan giggling while she lets a cockroach crawl on her hand is particularly meaningless. (Oh, but wait...give Faulkner his due: Claude also likes to partake in cockroach fights in bars...and his pet cockroach gets shot---yes, shot---during an aerial battle...and the men all have a drunken, funereal singalong for said roach afterwards... Yawn.)

Equally weird, and often just plain dumb, are bits of dialogue like Ronnie saying to the blind Claude: "Look at me!" And the blind Claude clutching Ronnie as the two stand at the doorway of the sleeping Ann's room: "Look at her while I'm touching you." (!!)  What, is this supposed to hint at some homoerotic subtext? If so, "subtext" should really be an ongoing current, not just one random pebble in the film's stream. Come to think of it, Faulkner also adds a random touch of incest to the proceedings: Ann is forever hanging on brother Ronnie and confiding to him about which man she loves at the moment. When she tells Ronnie that she and Claude are now married (a union that Ronnie has always been completely in favor of), she inexplicably asks him: "You don't hate me?" Ronnie: "No." [kisses her]. Ann [tenderly, breathlessly]: "That's twice you've kissed me." CUT.  Now, don't get excited; I'm definitely making the film seem more perversely interesting than it actually is. Perhaps a more complex psycho-sexual remake would be welcome...

The trite characters and dull, often nonsensical writing make this, for me, a runt of the Joan litter of films. Though Joan herself is gorgeous here, and gorgeously shot (by the expert Oliver T. Marsh who, along with George Folsey, was her primary cameraman at MGM), her looks and lighting aren't enough to rescue a poorly conceived and even more poorly executed film.